Inmates have started a mass hunger strike
NCRI – On Thursday, June 10, the prisoners in Ward 1 of Gohardasht Prison in the city of Karaj went on hunger strike in protest at repeated raids by prison guards, ongoing and intense tortures, cutting off their communications with outside world, and cancelling visitations on Saturday. A number of prisoners were severely injured and battered during brutal assault on them. In order to prevent leakage of the news of these brutalities from the prison, the regime’s henchmen refrain from sending the injured to the prison clinic and have halted visitations and communications for the same reason.
Repeated attacks on prisoners by guards and battering them have been carried out after two documented footages were broadcast disclosing horrible conditions in the hideous ward ‘doghouse.’ They are trying to identify those who filmed those shocking footages. A number of prisoners have been transferred to solitary cells undergoing brutal tortures.
In the two documented footages, two young prisoners revealed that the torturers transfer prisoners, who are mainly young people, to solitary cells called ‘doghouse’ for their protests against pressures and unbearable prison conditions. Some of the systematic tortures and horrible conditions imposed on prisoners are, breaking prisoners’ legs and arms, rape and sexual assault by inserting batons following lengthy tortures and while enduring broken legs and arms, not taking care of heavily wounded inmates until their injuries get infected putting them at risk of death, spraying pepper and tear gas in the cells, pouring fire extinguisher foam on the face of prisoners, murdering prisoners and pretending they had committed suicide or died of overdose of narcotics.
Other types of torture that are imposed on prisoners in a systematic way in gruesome ‘doghouse’ ward are, depriving prisoners from any sanitation and medical services for successive weeks, stripping the prisoners naked and taking their clothes and blanket during rest time and at the same time making the cells’ cement floor wet, giving minimum food only to keep them alive, battering prisoners by batons, and insulting and humiliating them on a daily basis.
Iranian Resistance warns against appalling conditions in ward 1 of Gohardasht prison that pose an ongoing threat to the lives of prisoners and calls on international human rights organizations, especially the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and relevant UN rapporteurs and bodies, to condemn such barbaric crimes. It also insists on the need to assign a UN special rapporteur for human rights in Iran and dispatch a fact finding mission to identify and punish the culprits of such crimes.
Secretariat of National Council of Resistance of Iran
June 11, 2010
